It's been a while since I've written about personal responsibility. It seems, as a nation, we've pretty much forgotten about personal responsibility as a viable way of conducting our personal affairs. It seems that if we screw up our lives enough, we can find an apologist for our behavior, not matter how despicable we become.
Rivrdog has a great rant up about alcoholism and the inability of the alchoholic to control his behavior.
Then we come to the Paris Hilton debacle. She has managed to totally screw up her life, yet can't come to grips with the fact that it is her own fault. She has money, prestige, and privelige yet can't believe that society's rules apply to her as well. In short, she has no personal responsibility.
The government has taken away our personal responsibility. We let it happen like a frog put into a cool pot of water will allow the heat to slowly build under the pot until the water boils. One law against another, one government project dovetailed into the next and we forget that we are responsible. We deny responsibility. We duck it and dodge it and society lets us get away with it. This was not always the case.
When I was in high school, we always had one girl get pregnant during the school year and she was always expelled. Girls are the keepers of the sexual energy of our species. Girls were expected to say NO! and if they failed, then they were labeled. It was unjust, it was unfair, but it was their personal responsibility. If a high school girl was having sex, she made damn sure it was safe sex because she didn't want the labels that came from an unwanted pregnancy. Today we are more fair, more just, and girls routinely get pregnant in high school knowing that a host of government services awaits them. It's repulsive to me, personally.
When I was a young adult, the alcohol laws were not as nannyish as they are now. Over the years, somehow, we've taken away the personal responsibility of the driver. When I was starting out, laboring mightily during the day, it was taken as a badge of honor to stop at a convenience store and get one beer for the road. One beer to drink as I drove home. I wasn't going to a bar, I wasn't shunning my family, I was drinking one beer as I drove home. Drinking and driving weren't against the law. Drunk driving was, and we were expected to know the difference. Or, as a young married, on the rare occasion we found a babysitter, we'd have a couple of drinks before we went out to a nightspot, to lessen our bar tab there. Money was tight and my wife wanted a loosen-up drink before she got to the dance floor. Either way, we weren't in any danger of the local constabulary unless we were found drunk. Society didn't much care what we did as long as we didn't cross that tripwire of unacceptable behaviour.
The tripwire is much, much lower now. It's easier to get tripped up because the law has taken the place of the approbation of society. Back in the day, there was public shame associated with violating the rules of polite society. Today there is no shame.
Sometimes, I think we should repeal all the laws written since 1964, both on the federal, local, and state level. Repeal all of them and see how we progress as a society. It'd be an interesting experiment.
5 comments:
Beautiful, just beautiful.
I'm in awe.
You are now the Grand Poo-Bah of the First Louisiana Lodge of Retrogenarians.
In case anyone reading this can't parse english words, that means "the generation which wants to go back".
Just don't forget to go to the range, PawPaw.
+ 1 on repealing the laws back to 1964. I'll see you that and raise you some case law and court rulings too.
Andy Ford
Glad to see I am not the only one who sees that society has shirked its responsibility to police it self. Now we are saddled with a government that legislates morality, putting the burden of policing that morality on the police.
I am starting to believe that is the cause of the us vs them attitude between the general public and the peace officers. When the police have to play mommy and daddy to the general public both grow to resent it, but, seem to have a hard time laying the blame at the foot of the legislature, and ultimately at societies feet for causing the situation in the first place.
Pawpaw, how's this idea? How 'bout every twenty years EVERY law on EVERY book comes up for a vote? If the majority wants it, it stays on the books. If the majority doesn't want it, off the books it goes.
My little burg still has a law on the books saying no public entertainment. It's also illegal to dance here.
Amen Pawpaw. All of the educators I know, from the custodian to the Superintendent and the School Board echo the same thoughts. Too many people shirk their responsibility, and too often the state and federal government make the schools and the law enforcement professionals pick up where the family should be acting. I hate it when they try to legislate common sense, too bad we can't just expect people to actually have some.
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